Among the inmates of Washington's government-media complex, curiosity stirs. Baron has his share of friends and allies. One ultimate-insider type, however, told me he was surprised by what seemed to be a degree of apprehension. Delphic, he would not elaborate.

Fear of the unknown? Then again, it might be an outer-directed community preparing to confront Emerson's self-invented man. In intellectual terms, there was nothing clubbable about Emerson.

SEE "MR. BARON GOES TO WASHINGTON" HERE for Peter Kadzis's off-the-top-of-his-head version of this story, written the day Baron's Globe exit was announced.

WHY EVERYONE HATES WASHINGTON | August 30, 2013 If you want to understand why the United States appears to be beyond political redemption, read 'This Town.'

THE GLOBE SALE, CONTEXTUALIZED | February 27, 2013 News that the Globe was on the auction block was certainly a shock, but it should have been no surprise.

KEVIN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE | December 19, 2012 Thanks to the initiative of journalism-advocacy group MuckRock, 500 pages of raw and redacted FBI files focusing on allegations of corruption during the 1970s in the administration of the late Boston mayor Kevin White are now available to the public.

HUB FANS BID BARON ADIEU | November 16, 2012 In the 1960s and 1970s, when the media sky was as expansive as the horizon of Fenway Park, Boston Globe editor Tom Winship hankered to make the Globe one of the nation's top 10 dailies. He succeeded.